Republican attorneys general from 14 states — led by Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway — sent a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency earlier this month demanding action on what they warn is “a growing threat to the country’s waterways.”

So what gives? Has America’s staunchly pro-industrial party suddenly ...Read more

Today’s 9-year-olds are significantly better readers than 9-year-olds were a half-century ago. Today’s 13-year-olds are not.

That’s the troubling lesson from the latest long-term trend data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The results suggest that America has made real progress helping young children build ...Read more

Recently, during rounds, I met a patient who almost missed her own heart attack. She'd had chest pain for hours before she finally came in. Clinicians know what those hours cost. When asked why she had waited, her answer made my own heart sink. She had a high-deductible health plan — an HDHP — which meant she would owe thousands of dollars ...Read more

He was the killer of big blond spiders, the fixer of household things, an occasional Santa’s helper. Among his many acts of service, my father volunteered with Chicago’s Christmas Ship, bringing Christmas trees to disadvantaged families in the area.

My father was also a refugee.

Dad was 6 years old when his homeland of Germany attacked ...Read more

Spinning a good narrative is critical to selling artificial intelligence these days. But the leaders of today’s biggest labs are giving us whiplash by changing their stories on employment. The most likely outcome is neither a job apocalypse nor productivity utopia, but something harder to measure: a quiet degradation of the quality of the jobs...Read more

Outside Pittsburgh, a retired couple sitting around their dining-room table worries about whether Social Security will still be there in ten years. Their daughter and son-in-law, living across town, struggle with a different question: whether they will ever be able to buy a home, pay off their student loans, and raise two children without going ...Read more

A transgender teen tested Roo, Planned Parenthood’s AI-powered sexual health chatbot, which includes LGBTQ+ health topics, looking for private answers to questions many teens are afraid to ask out loud. Instead, the teen felt unseen. “It’s not so inclusive, which would deter me,” the teen said in a 2026 Journal of Medical Internet ...Read more

Many progressives elevated accused killer Luigi Mangione to folk-hero status after he was arrested and accused of gunning down a health insurance executive in cold blood in New York City in late 2024. The horrifically twisted theory is that executing business executives should be celebrated if it seemingly advances some left-wing cause du jour. ...Read more

Last week, I found myself in a situation that could soon be familiar to a lot more Americans: sliding into a CT scanner with a smattering of electrodes attached to my chest and ribs, my arms raised over my head. A serene voice asked me to take a small breath and hold it. A loudish whirring from the machine, a few shifts of the table, and another...Read more

If the deal the U.S. has struck with Iran to end hostilities in the Persian Gulf is welcome, it’s far from a victory. Any hopes of achieving more rest on whether the White House is willing to learn from this self-created mess.

According to the text of a memorandum of understanding disclosed to reporters by a senior administration official on ...Read more

When Graciela Dela Torre developed chronic pain while on the job at a freight company in the Chicago area, she did what millions of Americans have done: She filed a disability claim.

After a couple of years, her company’s insurance carrier decided she no longer qualified for compensation. Again, Dela Torre did what millions of Americans have ...Read more

During National Pollinator Week (June 22–28), people across the country will celebrate bees and other pollinators while learning how to help protect them. As a master’s student in entomology, I’m doing some reflecting of my own after an assignment that left me questioning what “protection” really means.

My professor asked me to plan ...Read more

When Illinois Treasurer Michael Frerichs met Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican, he brought an unusual gift: a check for $8.65.

The money came from an old PayPal account that had been turned over to Illinois as unclaimed property before Robert Prevost, an Illinois native, became the pope. The amount was insignificant. The publicity was priceless.

...Read more

On the anniversary of D-Day, I sat down to watch a movie and found myself unexpectedly in tears.

But that's what Pressure did to me. The new war film was directed and edited by Anthony Maras, written by Maras and David Haig, and starred Andrew Scott as the Scottish meteorologist James Stagg and Brendan Fraser as the burdened General Dwight D. ...Read more

Earlier this year a short, viral video stopped me in my tracks. It featured Steve Harvey, who said your father is really the only man on earth who genuinely wants you to do better than him.

It hit me hard as a dad and a son. It is truer than it's comfortable to admit. As a man, it really seems that most men who love you tend to have a ceiling. ...Read more

“Eat real food,” the slogan behind the USDA’s new food pyramid, has been one of the most popular, bipartisan ideas hammered home by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Health and Human Services secretary. But the administration Kennedy serves is making it more expensive for families to do that.

Grocery prices are 26% higher than they were five ...Read more

There is a powerful force that affects politics as much as it affects individual lives. It is fatigue.

We just get darn tired of something, be it a job, a relationship, a hobby or a routine. We have been devoted to it for years, and suddenly we want out; we want to do something else. What we loved doing has become boring and tedious. More work ...Read more

Social Security is the bedrock of nearly every American’s retirement plan — the steady, dependable stream of income they can count on to guarantee them a basic standard of living in old age.

That foundation is now in jeopardy. According to the Social Security trustees, the program’s primary trust fund is on track to be depleted before ...Read more

President Donald Trump has given his “Complete and Total Endorsement” to the hard right-wing candidate for president in Colombia, Abelardo de la Espriella, for the second round of the presidential election coming Sunday. More than expressing his personal preference, the U.S. president also noted that the “results of this Election are very ...Read more

New York Attorney General Tish James, along with AG counterparts in 17 other states, have prevailed over Donald Trump’s capricious attempts to derail offshore wind energy projects all around the country by imposing a moratorium on approvals and even the issuance permits or leases for already-approved projects.

Having lost before a federal ...Read more